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<video> elements do not contain a <track> element with [kind="captions"]

Appears in: Accessibility audits

Captions make video elements usable for deaf or hearing-impaired users, providing critical information such as who is talking, what they're saying, and other non-speech information.

How the Lighthouse video caption audit fails

Lighthouse flags <video> elements that are missing a <track> element with the attribute kind="captions".


How to add captions to a video

Add at least one track element to the video element with the kind="captions" attribute:

<source src="marathonFinishLine.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<track src="captions_en.vtt" kind="captions" srclang="en" label="english_captions">
<track src="captions_es.vtt" kind="captions" srclang="es" label="spanish_captions">

The example above includes both captions for hearing impaired users, and audio descriptions for visually impaired users. Audio descriptions provide context beyond dialog, such as scenery, facial expressions. See also <video> elements do not contain a <track> element with [kind="description"].


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